'What's it this time?' I asked.

'Sunspots,' he said.

I tried to brush him off, because I wanted that beer so bad I could almost taste it, but Billy had an idea, and he wasn't going to let mc get away before he told me all about it.

'It's pretty well recognized,' he told me, 'that sunspots do affect human lives. Lots of sunspots and we have good times. Stocks and bonds are up, prices are high. Trade is good. But likewise, we have an increased nervous tension. We have violence. People get excited.'

'Hell starts to pop,' said Herb.

'That's exactly it,' agreed Billy. 'Tchijevsky, the Russian scientist, pointed it out thirty years ago. I believe he's the one that noted increased activity on battle fronts during the first World War occurring simultaneously with the appearance of large spots on the Sun. Back in 1937, the sit-down strikes were ushered in by one of the most rapid rises in the sunspot curve in twenty years.'

I couldn't get excited. But Billy was all worked up about it. That's the way he is –enthusiastic about his work.

'People have their ups and downs,' he said, a fanatic light creeping into his eyes, the way it does when he's on the trail of some idea to make Globe readers gasp.

'Not only people, but peoples – nations, cultures, civilizations. Go back through history and you can point out a parallelism in the cycles of sunspots and significant events. Take 1937, for example, the year they had the sit-down strikes. In July of that year the sunspot cycle hits its maximum with a Wolfer index of 137.

'Scientists are pretty sure periods of excitement are explained by acute changes in the nervous and psychic characters of humanity which take place at sunspot maxima, but they aren't sure of the reasons for those changes.'